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Saturday, October 14, 2006

HOME AT LAST

Mary Beth and I arrived in Boston last night around 10 pm and were picked up at the airport by her brother John who lives in Boston. We spent the night there last night, I slept very well but MB's time clock is off so she tossed and turned some of the night. This morning we took the train to Portland where friend Karen Wainberg picked us up and drove us home to Brunswick. It is great to be home and the weather greeting us in Maine is a near perfect fall day. Cool, clear blue sunny sky, with leaves turning colors and falling on the ground. Our friend Debbie had left a pumpkin sitting by our front door and our two dogs, having been tended by friends while we were gone, were waiting for us with wagging tails.

I had well over 1,200 emails waiting on me and I just spent two hours weeding through them. It appears that Bush has released his long expected new national space policy while we were gone, just on the heels of our Keep Space for Peace Week.Have not had a chance yet to look at the details but it will likely give the green light to deploy weapons in space.

In the photo above the deputy mayor of Nagpur in India welcomed us to his city as we were brought to the statue of Gandhi to adorn it with flowers. We spent four days there working hard and speaking to hundreds of folks and got covered in the paper nearly every day during the visit. One headline about one of my talks read, "U.S. is source of violence and arms race in world."

Friday, October 13, 2006

HELLO FROM LONDON

Have a six-hour layover at London airport so thought I'd post a quick hello. Trip to India went very well. Should be home by afternoon on Oct 14.

Folks in India worked us hard and especially in Nagpur where we spent four days. They were taking us to at least 3 events a day at local colleges/universities/medical schools as well as community events. Got to speak to a huge number of medical students which was quite great. One group of 11 medical students took a 12-hour train ride to Nagpur so they could come to two days worth of my speaking events. The organizer of my entire trip who lives in Nagpur has undertaken to help organize a national students peace group and he felt my presence was quite helpful in reaching alot of students.

MB and I fly into Boston and then take the train back to Maine.

India is an amazing experience with just staggering poverty and at the same time a kindness that you will find hard to duplicate in many other places. I will need to sit on the trip for a few days before trying to write a report.

Of course the big story was the North Korea nuclear test and the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. lecturing them and Iran about developing nukes while America works on new generations of nukes and Star Wars on top of that.